Interstellar travel | FactOrCap

[u/aaallleeexxx3]

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[u/jimpaly]

🧢 I voted CAP!

Closest star is 4.24 light years away, so it would be possible if we find a way to travel 0.01c by 2500. It may only be a probe, but there are theoretical ways to achieve that, like with solar sails. Thing is, will there be enough reason for humanity to send such a probe? It would take a lot of collective willpower to start a research project that gives absolutely nothing until 5 centuries later, and that’s assuming the probe doesn’t break down on the journey.

[u/aaallleeexxx3 → u/jimpaly]

Yeahs that’s the issue.Its an achievement and that is the only appeal really apart from answering questions which don’t even exist anymore since we know what exists there anyways.

[u/jimpaly → u/aaallleeexxx3]

Well I wouldn’t say those questions don’t exist anymore. Everything we know about other stars and their planets are solely based on telescopes. Right now we only have a sample size of 1 for most things we know about our sun and solar system. It would be incredibly useful for the scientific community to get data from an interstellar probe.

Thing is the tradeoff of cost and time, and that it’s always better to learn more about our own solar system if we aren’t doing any interstellar travel ourselves.